[0:00]Hello, everybody. My name is Shipra Singh and I welcome you all to this insightful video on digital marketing interview questions and answers from Career Ride. In this digital world, where people spend a large chunk of their time online, digital marketing offers one of the easiest and measurable ways for the businesses to connect with them. Something that is going to be a part of every organization's marketing strategy for a very long time. In today's video, let's see some important and commonly asked questions on various aspects of digital marketing. Such as SEO, social media strategies, content marketing, email campaigns, analytics, etc. Being able to answer these questions effectively increases the chances of selection tremendously. To ensure that you don't miss out on anything important, watch the complete video without skipping any parts of it. Ready? Fantastic. Let's start. Question number one. What is digital marketing? What are some of the emerging trends and technologies in this field? Usually, the first question to be asked at any interview.
[1:10]While most of us are prepared to answer the first part of the question, it is actually the second part of the question that's more important here. As it showcases your awareness of the latest happenings in the field and your preparation. To answer this question, you can say, Digital marketing is actually an umbrella term that covers under it all online activities companies do to promote their products and services. These activities are done using various digital methods and platforms, including website, search engines, social media platforms, email, etc. The basic purpose here is to reach the potential customer, increase the awareness of your product and generate leads for sales and business growth. The best part here is the method is cost effective, measurable and delivers results in today's online world. Now, coming to the latest happenings in the field, you can say, some of the latest trends the world is noticing that will go a long way are, voice search optimization, hyper targeting, video marketing, influencer marketing, virtual reality, augmented reality, social commerce, use of AI and machine learning in process automation and data analysis, etc. Okay, let's move on to question number two now. What do you know about PPC advertising? How does it differ from CPM, CPC and CTR? Now, this is one of the most important questions at this level. Because without the concept of PPC, digital marketing is incomplete, as you can see. Here PPC stands for Pay Per Click. It is an online advertising model. Pay attention, it is an advertising model wherein the advertisers can buy the results to their websites rather than earning them through the search engine organically. Each time your advertisement is clicked, you pay a certain amount to the platform that advertises your link for the chosen keywords. What is this? This is PPC. On the other hand, CPC and CPM are pricing models. CPC is the cost you actually pay when your ad link is clicked. Its full form is Cost Per Click. CPM stands for Cost Per Mille. It means the cost you pay for every thousand impressions of your ad shown on a platform. CPC is preferred when you want the potential customers to actually reach your website or resource. CPM is preferred when you want to increase the visibility of your brand. So you advertise through the banners, etc. Now coming to CTR. CTR stands for click through rate. In simple words, how many people to whom your ad impression was shown actually clicked on it to go to your website or the resource that you pointed to? It is measured in percentage. For example, if 20 people out of 1000 actually clicked on your ad, your CTR is 2%. The higher the CTR, the more compelling the ad is. Okay? Now let's come to the next question. Question number three. What is CPA? So CPA here stands for cost per acquisition. Meaning, how much did it cost you to acquire a desired action or conversion, such as a purchase, sign up, download, or form submission, etc. For example, if your campaign cost was $100 and you gained 25 downloads of your app with it, your CPA is $4 here. It means it took you $4 to acquire every single download here. Now, the question that may arise here is, how do you keep your CPA low? So, to keep your CPA low, improve your quality score. Use targeted ads so that only relevant people click and come. Refine your landing pages so that the visitors are able to find all the relevant information and are able to make a decision. Making use of negative keywords to keep away irrelevant clicks also helps in making sure that your money is not wasted on irrelevant clicks. The follow up question here can be, what are negative keywords? So negative keywords are the terms for which you don't want your ads to show up. This is because you know that the customers coming through these keywords would be relevant and will not convert into sales or your desired action. For example, if you are selling perfumes that are premium, your negative keywords can be terms like affordable, budget, inexpensive, cheap, wholesale, etc. This is because the people searching for these terms are not your target audience. Even though they're looking for perfumes, they won't buy the one from you because your perfumes are premium and hence they will be expensive. Now, another important question in the world of digital marketing is, What is Ad Rank? So, Ad Rank is a term used by search engines like Google to determine where should your ad be placed on the search result pages. It is used to ensure that the most relevant and highest quality ads appear first in the search results. In the simplest form, Ad Rank is equal to maximum amount of bid into the quality score. Here, this max bid is the maximum bidding amount you are willing to pay as an advertiser for your Ad. But as you can see, it is not the only factor determining your Ad Rank. If you can improve your quality score, your Ad Rank can improve even at a lower bid. So, the next question that arises from here is, How can you improve your Quality Score? So, first of all, quality score is a metric that determines the relevance and quality of your ads, keywords and landing pages. A high quality score means all of these three things are excellent in your case. Showing such ads on the top keeps both the viewers and merchants happy for Google. Buyers get happy as they find the most relevant and good quality links on the top. Sellers get happy as their campaigns become more cost effective with better conversion rates. To achieve a high quality score, use keywords that are relevant and closely related to your ad. Making use of negative keywords helps you avoid irrelevant clicks. This is the next trick. Ensure your ad copy is able to catch the intention of the users. Including stronger calls to action, that is CTA, improves the effectiveness of your ad. Create easy to understand and user-friendly landing pages is very, very important. So, using these tricks, you can improve your quality score. Moving on to another important question. What is ROAS? That is ROAS. It stands for Return on Ad Spend. This is a metric that measures how much have you earned on each penny that you spent on advertising. It is useful because it helps you in understanding your profitability with the ads and allocating your budgets accordingly. It also helps you compare various campaigns. And since you get to know which campaigns are working well and which are not, it gives you a benchmark for comparison also. This allows you to improve those underperforming campaigns. Moving on to question number eight now. What are dynamic search ads? In which case would you avoid using them? So, dynamic search ads or DSAs from Google is a more automatic way of running your ads on Google search pages. What DSAs do is they automatically analyze your website, identify relevant keywords, and automatically generate ads to target them. DSA campaigns work excellently for websites like Amazon, Flipkart that have a large number of products to promote. But since everything here is done automatically and the whole reliance of DSAs is on the content they're able to find on your website, they won't be able to work efficiently if your site's content is poorly structured or if the copy is wrong or otherwise problematic. In such cases, you should not be using DSA campaigns. Okay, now that the market is moving more and more towards servicing the customers locally, another important question could be, What are local search ads? So see, local search ads are those ads from Google that help you promote your business location in relevant local search results. These can be searches on Google search engine or Google Maps also. For example, when you try to find photo studio near me, the results you see at the top with phone numbers, directions, address, opening and closing time, they are all a result of local search ads. These local ads help your business by getting the inquiries from potential local customers and actual visits from them during the business hours. These ads offer better ROI for physical stores and services that are seeking visibility in the local area. Okay, let's move on to another important question. What are responsive search ads? So responsive search ads or RSAs are a type of Google Ads format where the best combination of headlines, descriptions, and layout of your ads are automatically chosen to match the intention of the user. Pay attention. The various options to be used for these headlines, descriptions and layout are provided by you only. They are not auto generated, like in the case of DSAs, we discussed a while back. Google's AI here just determines the best combination of various elements of your ad and presents them in front of the users. The advantage of using RSAs is you get to make use of the Google's intelligence and the flexibility to reach a wider audience with messages that resonate with them better. Okay, so if you think digital marketing is only about Google, the next question is going to surprise you. And the question is, can you tell us something about relevance score? Now, this relevance score is a metric used in Facebook Ads. So being a digital marketing professional, be prepared to discuss platforms other than Google also. Relevance score evaluates how well your ad resonates with the target audience. So, when someone has a positive interaction with your ad on Facebook, such as they click, like, share or comment on it, it improves your relevance score. On the other hand, negative interactions like hiding the ad or marking it as irrelevant, pulls your score down. Also, the quality of landing page that a user comes to after clicking your ad, impacts your relevance score also. Now, ads with a better score can enjoy a lower CPC or CPM. They also perform better in terms of the returns they earn. To add finishing touches to your answer, you can further say, to improve your relevance score, make sure that it is a high quality content. You have targeted the right audience with it and you bring them to a user-friendly landing page with clear instructions. Carrying out the tests to work out the best combination of headlines, description, visuals also helps in improving your relevance score. Okay, moving on to another interesting question. What do you know about Carousel Ads? Now see, Carousel Ads are an ad format on Facebook that lets you showcase up to 10 images or videos in a single belt of ad. Each image here can have its own link. Something like this that you see on Facebook. Different products can be highlighted on different cards in a single ad. Each card has its own headline, description and call to action. Users can swipe on their mobile phone or scroll through the ads on their desktop to see them. These ads engage the users by engaging them to swipe or scroll. They're usually placed in Facebook Feed, Instagram Feed, stories, Messenger inbox, etc. Okay, let's move on to question number 13 now. What do you know about Remarketing and Retargeting? Now, a very important question, a lot of people get confused with these two terms, so listen carefully. To answer this question you can say, often used interchangeably, the two terms have the same goal, that is to increase the sales, but they differ in their approaches. Remarketing is more about re-engaging your existing customers to get new sales. It could be via ads or emails. For example, when Amazon reminds you about buying a product you bought some months back, which it believes must have finished by now, it is remarketing. On the other hand, when someone visits your website, subscribes to your newsletter, checks out a product on your website or social media, but doesn't actually buy, you try to re-engage them by showing your ads on the websites or platforms they visit. This is retargeting. Basically, trying to turn a not yet customer into your customer. Question number 14 is again an important one. What do you know about the funnel in Digital Marketing? Now, the digital marketing funnel is a presentation of the process the customers have to go through from initially becoming aware of your brand to making a final purchase and beyond that. The six prime stages in a digital funnel are, number one, awareness stage, which is the top of the funnel. At this stage, you try to create an awareness of your product and attract the customers. Then you move on to the interest stage, consideration, when you nurture the leads you have generated by answering to their questions, giving demos, addressing any concerns they may have. Then you move on to conversions and then loyalty. You get to understand this with repeat purchases, customer satisfaction ratings, etc. and finally, advocacy. That is, when positive reviews, shares on social media, referral traffic start coming, all of these are the metrics to measure advocacy. Question number 15. What is geotargeting and how can it be used in campaigns? Now, geotargeting is a digital marketing strategy in which you deliver your content, ads, or offers based on the geographical location of the users. Systems use technologies like IP address, mobile locations, GPS to ascertain the location of a user. Since geotargeting is for a specific area, the turnout ratio from the local crowd is better in this case. For example, if you have a new store of Croma opening in a specific area. Clearly, the target buyers are the people in the vicinity, maybe in a radius of 3 km or 5 km. In this case, it would make more sense to advertise this store to the targeted customers rather than the people sitting at the other end of the city. What is this? This is geotargeting. Geotargeting makes your campaigns cost effective with a better ROI. Okay, question number 16 now. What is SEO? To answer this question you can say, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a practice to optimize your website to make it more appealing to the search engine algorithms and the users. So that the website ranks higher in search engine results for the targeted keywords. The basic purpose here is to increase the relevant organic traffic to the website by using a compelling title, page description, etc. Okay, let's move on to another very important question. Please pay attention. The question is, what are Core Web Vitals? So, Core Web Vitals are a set of performance metrics that show how your web pages perform. They measure the user experience on your web pages. The focus here is on the page load performance, interactivity and visual stability. The three most important metrics in Core Web Vitals are, number one, LCP. It measures how quickly does the largest content element on your page load. This is usually an image or video. An LCP of less than or equal to 2.5 seconds is considered to be good. If it is greater than 4 seconds, it is considered to be poor. A faster LCP indicates better user engagement and satisfaction. The second metric used here is FID or First Input Delay. Which measures the time it takes for the page to become interactive for the users, like click, tap, keyboard inputs, etc. An FID which is less than or equal to 200 milliseconds is considered to be good. Anything that is greater than 500 milliseconds is considered to be poor. A faster FID is an indicator of lesser frustration in your users as they can begin interacting with your web pages quickly. The third metric used here is cumulative layout shift, also called as CLS. Which measures how much do the elements on the page shift during loading. CLS is a measure of visual experience on your pages. Shifting elements on a web page can be very annoying. A CLS value which is less than or equal to 0.1 is considered to be good. While anything that is beyond 0.25 is poor. Okay, with this let's move on to question number 18 now. What do you understand by the term "Search Intent"? To answer this question you can say, Search intent or user intent is the main goal a user has on their mind when they write a search query. Four most common types of search intents include informational, commercial, navigational, and transactional. For example, how many grams of protein does one egg have? What is my intention here? Clearly, finding information. Similarly, quick flower decoration for Diwali. Intention, I want something that can be done in a small period of time. So basically, for a page to rank higher, it must meet the search intention of the user. And that is the whole story about. Okay, let's move on to another important question. What is Zero-Click Search? So, Zero-Click Search is when the user's query is answered directly on the Google's search engine result page. You don't need to click on any link to find your answer. These could be in the form of widgets, graphs or simple text, as we see many a time on the SERPs. Unit converters, currency converters, dictionary meanings of the words, weather widget, etc. All of these are the examples of Zero-Click Search. The information here is gathered by the search engine from trusted data providers or structured data and presented to you directly on the search engine result pages. Question number 20. What are Featured Snippets? Now, featured snippets are highlighted excerpts of text that we see at the top of Google search engine result pages. Something like this. This position is also known as position zero and appears above all the organic search results. These snippets provide the users with a quick answer to their search query and result in an improved CTR to that particular web page. Now pay attention, this is very, very important. A Zero-Click Search might include a featured snippet as a part of the SERP, but not all Zero-Click Searches are Featured Snippets. Many more things come under Zero-Click. Okay, moving on to another important question. What is Google's Passage Ranking? Explain its practical implications. Pay attention, this question is very, very important. Passage Ranking is an AI system that Google uses to identify individual sections or what we call passages of a web page to better understand how relevant is a web page to a search query. Earlier, Google used to rank the complete web page. Which meant that if you had a very specific query, rather than a broad topic, Google would still list the complete web page. But if the answer was buried somewhere deep within the post, it was not able to pinpoint to that specific line or paragraph. This change with Google's Passage Ranking. What Google's Passage Ranking does is it helps Google pinpoint to the specific paragraph that answers your query specifically. Now, coming to the practical implications of this development. Now, you don't need to write a new, specific blog post for every search query as a content creator. Long-tail queries can be answered in a post on a broader topic now. And your one post can rank high for more than one search queries also. So if you write long-form content, you can answer multiple sub queries revolving around the main topic that readers want an answer to. Okay, now let's move on to another important question. What is the difference between NoFollow and DoFollow links? To answer this question you can say, two very commonly used terms in digital marketing are NoFollow and DoFollow. NoFollow links do not pass on any link equity while backlinking and they do not influence rankings in any way. While DoFollow definitely pass on the link juice and help in improving a site's SEO while backlinking.
[24:37]Question number 24. What is A/B Testing? Now see, A/B Testing is a method of comparing two versions of a web page, thumbnail, or app against each other to determine which one performs better. The elements that can be tested for A/B Testing may include navigation links, calls to action, design, copy, content offer, headlines, email subject line, from address of an email, images, social media buttons, logos, taglines, slogans, etc. Okay, now there have been a lot of developments at Google in the last few years. As new age digital marketing professionals, it is very important to be aware of them also. And your next question could be about another such development. The question is, have you heard of SpamBrain and RankBrain? Now see, let's deal with SpamBrain first. So SpamBrain is Google's AI powered spam detection algorithm that can automatically find and remove low-quality websites from Google's search results. So what this does is it automatically enhances the quality and relevance of the search results. On the other hand, RankBrain is also an AI system that is used by Google. It works on continuously improving the relevance of search results by correctly interpreting the intention of the user behind that query. So you see, both of them are AI systems to improve the results, but their approach is different. Okay, now in this content dominated world, any digital marketing interview is incomplete without talking about the content part of it. So here are some questions that you may have to face. And the first such question is, what is user generated content? So user generated content is the content your users or customers produce for you. It can be in the form of a review, photo, video, blog post, or social media mentions also. It especially helps in building trust and credibility with potential customers. At the same time, UGC helps in increasing customer loyalty as people feel recognized and valued. You can equate it with word of mouth publicity also. Now, your next question related to content could be, have you heard about content repurposing? To answer this question you can say, content repurposing means taking the existing content and developing it in different formats and publishing it. This saves you from the trouble of developing the new content every time. And you are able to make the optimum use of existing content and increase its impact also. For example, when you take out certain chunks of the existing content and use them as quotes from the author to publish them on social media, what is it? It is content repurposing. Similarly, when you put out different related blog post together, you may be able to develop a new e-book. That's content repurposing again. Okay, now let's move on to another important question. Pay attention. Can you talk about some commonly used content performance metrics? Now see, to answer this question you can say, content performance metrics measure how well is your content marketing effort performing. Is it getting you the desired ROI or not? Some of the key metrics to measure in this case are, number one, traffic metrics. Where you measure the page views, unique visitors and organic search traffic. Then you want to see the engagement. Where you measure things like average time spent on the page, bounce rate and pages per session. Conversion metrics tell you how many leads you are able to generate, what is the conversion rate, CTA clicks. In SEO performance metrics, you measure your keyword rankings, backlinks and click through rates. And finally, in your revenue metrics, you see the ROI and sales attribution. And when you put together all of these things, you are able to understand how well is your content marketing effort performing and where are you getting stuck. Okay, let's move on to question number 29 now. What is customer journey mapping? How can it help you in improving your performance? Now see, customer journey mapping means creating a visual map of end-to-end interaction of a customer with your product or brand. That is, from how they found out about your product to their post-sales interaction. When you know your customer's journey, you can streamline your marketing efforts. Identify any hidden opportunities for you. Relieve what might be troubling them. And finally, increase the conversion rates based on all these things. Okay, now social media is one of the most important weapons in the armory of any digital marketing professional. So this is one question that you must prepare for your interview. And the question is, if I asked you to give me only five key elements to create a successful social media campaign, what would they be? Now, to answer this question you can say, a social media campaign is a series of marketing activities that are interrelated and run on various social media platforms. Their purpose is to achieve a company's business goal, using the power of these social media platforms. The goal of every campaign can be different. If I were to give five elements to build a successful social media campaign, they would be, number one, clear goal setting. Then you have to understand the budget that is available with you. Understanding of buyer's persona and where you would find them is really important. This helps you in deciding the mix of the platforms that you have to target. Then create a social media calendar with a clear understanding of what each activity is trying to achieve. And finally, start creating engaging content, publishing it, engaging with the participants and analyzing the results. Question number 31. What do you know about Affiliate Marketing? So, quite an interesting one. Affiliate Marketing is a marketing strategy wherein an affiliate promotes products or services of a company and earns a commission for each sale or action that is completed through their promotional efforts. For example, if you promote a product sold on Amazon, every time a sale happens through your affiliate link, a commission is paid to you. You are the affiliate and what you're doing is affiliate marketing. Okay, and finally coming to the last question of this video. Are there any ethical considerations involved in digital marketing that you would advocate to the younger members of your team? Now see, your answer to this question tells the interviewers about your professionalism and maturity as a digital marketing professional. To answer this question you can say, internet is a sensitive world. It is very important to behave responsibly here. Keeping this in mind, following are some ethical considerations that I always advocate to the younger members of my team. Number one, never spam. Believe in consent based marketing. Adherence to laws and regulations is of prime importance in digital marketing, otherwise it can backfire badly. Number two, respect the privacy and behave responsibly with the customers and companies data that you have got access to. Always be honest and transparent in your interactions with the customers and viewers. Giving authentic information goes a long way in relationship building in this online world. Cultural sensitivity is very, very important, whether you are dealing with people internationally or nationally. And finally, know your social responsibility while writing, talking or developing videos or memes on any topic. Keep away from anything that promotes hatred, dishonest behavior and is sensitive. Now you see yourself, when you answer such questions with so much of maturity, which interviewer would want to let you go? So guys, this is all from my side in this video. If you face some different questions in your digital marketing interview, do share them in the comments box below for all of us to see. Let us all grow together. If you have found the video useful, do give it a thumbs up and share it with your friends also. Also, do let us know your thoughts about this video in the comments box below. Your comments work as a big motivation for us. I'll be back with a new video very soon, till then, bye bye and take care.
